After sending freak-folk king Devendra Banhart off to the greener pastures of V2 Recordings, Michael Gira’s Young God Records continued to show its impeccable taste with the signing of Akron/Family, quite possibly the most original new band to make its mark on 2005. Like a backwoods Animal Collective with better…
Luther Dickinson and his brother Cody come genuinely draped in Southern musical kudzu, being the offspring of renegade producer and artiste Jim Dickinson (whose adventures span from playing piano on the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses” to producing the most kick-ass Replacements album, Pleased to Meet Me). As members of the…
Matt Pike has finally gotten so stoned, he’s decided to try something different. Pike is the former leader of Sleep, who almost single-handedly carved out the genre known as stoner rock from the remains of Black Sabbath’s fetid carcass. Pike’s current band High On Fire built on 2002’s dominating Surrounded…
Evil Eddie Richards’ legendary dance résumé should be an easy sell in any forward-thinking metropolitan town, right? He played early gigs at some of the first UK clubs to feature American house music and was instrumental in introducing house to the burgeoning Manchester scene in the mid-’80s. Never stagnant, Eddie…
Most people have a natural mental membrane that filters their feelings, thoughts, theories and emotions before spewing them out into the world unchecked. Some don’t. If Mwanza Dover ever had one, it’s long since been overpowered by his boundless passion, restlessness and creativity–not to mention his flair for the dramatic…
If your taste in music is so safe, bland and generic that you think Christian rock can get a little too “saucy,” then you’re in luck, thanks to Dallas’ latest everything-on-the-radio clones Belafonte. Sure, there’s something for every radio rock fan to like on this debut EP–after all, Belafonte apes…
Despite her self-consciously sleazy stage shtick, Chantal Claret, the busty rock chick who leads this New York electro-trash act, doesn’t quite muster the live-wire esprit of her scene sister Karen O, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman famous for pouring beer on herself. Luckily for her bandmates, Claret doesn’t seem to…
Some soul singers have sung their joy–Sam Cooke and Stevie Wonder not least–and made their best art. But Anthony Hamilton comes from a bluesier tradition, with a lilting, earthbound voice that knows struggle and a masterwork in 2003’s heavy Comin’ From Where I’m From. Ain’t Nobody Worryin’, despite overall smoother…
Last year, a friend came to me desperate for a proper album to play at his father’s funeral. A stack of suggestions later, the service was graced by a true musical nirvana via the gentle, deliberate drones of Windy & Carl. The Michigan husband-and-wife duo must have planted a fly…
Bruce Springsteen may be the mythic New Jersey hero, but the true soul of the Garden State is manifested in Bon Jovi. Hear me out. At first blush, in the mid-1980s, with their shopping mall mullets and suburban rock dude drag, they were far more everyman than the proletariat of…
Uncle Tupelo made explicit how the roots of punk and hard-core honky-tonk intermingled: the rejection (often drunken) of instrumental competence, the politics of desire and its immediate and sometimes disastrous effects. Whether it has been cowpunk in the ’80s or alt-country the following decade, these two seemingly disparate genres have…
Decades ago, I was dragged to a concert in Austin for a funky roots outfit called Stick People. For the most part, it was a mess, but despite a claustrophobic hole-in-the-wall as the setting and even with pedestrian backing, lead singer Malford Milligan was a revelation, a lanky Prince-like figure…
There used to be a jungle illuminati of sorts in the UK. No, really. In the late ’90s when D&B was crossing over and cheesing out some of the top UK jocks, including Fabio, Grooverider and Kenny Ken, these clowns thought themselves important enough to form the so-called Jungle Committee…
At precisely 2:38 p.m. on December 28, U.S. District Judge Harlin DeWayne Hale officially pronounced Trees dead. With a few dry, muttered words offered after a few moments of silent deliberation, Hale informed the attorney representing the owners of the venerable live-music venue in Deep Ellum that they were to…
There you have it, Dallas. The tombstone. It’s glaring at you from newsstands all over town–even in the very district it’s damning, Deep Ellum–and we at the Dallas Observer really wish we were happy about dribbling out this “I told you so.” For years, we said that crime was a…
The laws of probability and rock tradition dictate that 2006, like every year before it, will not end without a notable musical death or two. Eventually all our rock heroes end up in the Afterlife All-Star Band. Those who went to the afterparty in 2005–including Luther Vandross, Link Wray, Clarence…
Time may be money, but Money didn’t get enough time at the last Final Friday of ’05. The local hip-hop showcase’s schedule shortchanged one of its biggest stars, Money Waters, leaving him only enough time for three songs. Too bad, because his tight set with live band Rubba Rode was…
The Strokes were labeled the saviors of N.Y.C.’s rock and roll scene when they oozed out of hipster enclaves (not to mention prep school) in 2001. But in the ensuing years, all of the tricks that made the fab five so exciting–snappy hooks, half-drunken confessions of love/lust and off-balance, VU-meets-AOR…
Buried halfway through this North Carolina band’s fine debut is “To Be Denied,” a mid-tempo ballad, a figuratively dead man’s bitter summary of a failed relationship and a song Ryan Adams wishes he had written. “You said that you had changed all of the locks/But I’d already lost my keys,”…
In December’s Vibe Mary J. Blige said that even though she’s comfortable revealing her abs in photographs, “I ain’t giving you titty, nipple, pubic hair or damn near clitoris.” While that’s certainly the most colorful quote uttered by a public figure this year, Blige’s comment actually runs counter to the…
Phil Spector’s legendary “Wall of Sound” is the inspiration for this massive, engrossing collection of early ’60s girl groups. While Spector’s best-known sides are absent, it’s amazing to hear how creatively energizing his hits were during a brief period usually disparaged as a downtime in “rock’s maturity.” Among the standard…
Not since the escapist early ’70s has the narrative “concept album” been so hip. In American Idiot’s vaguely political wake, Ryan Adams has released the autobiographical 29, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are hard at work on a musical essay about singer Karen O’s cat (no joke) and even Velvet Revolver…
